What surprised people the most about the cupcakes in ham was that the ham flavor was not strong – some even said they couldn’t taste it. The ham acts as an edible, environmentally friendly (depending on where your ham comes from) cupcake liner. If anything, it adds a salty flavor to each bite, which gives a zen sweet and salty effect.

The best cupcake bites are the ones with all of the components – pineapple, frosting, ham, and cake. So, don’t be shy; primally tear through both the ham and pineapple to achieve cupcake nirvana.

Honey Cupcake Baked in Ham Recipe

Update 12/14/11: You can’t go wrong with the honey cake recipe in this post, but I’d recommend my latest honey cake recipe (it’s found at the bottom of the linked post). It’s my new favorite!

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

Add oil, honey, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, juice, and whiskey. If you use the same measuring cup and you measure your oil before the honey, it will be easier to get all of the honey out of the cup.

Using a strong wire whisk or in an electric mixer on slow speed, stir together to make a thick, well-blended batter, making sure that no ingredients are stuck to the bottom.

Place one slice of ham in each well of the cupcake tin. Try to make sure that the part on the bottom and sides of the pan has no holes in it. I found that most of the slices of ham I bought had holes, so I just ensured that the holes were positioned toward the top of the cupcake tin.

Spoon batter into the ham, as shown in the photo above.

Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. If you put this recipe into a normal cupcake liner sans ham, it will bake in about 20 minutes.

Notes

Top these cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and candied pineapple. See the bottom of this post for more information.

The Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

The Topper

Of course, I topped my cupcakes with candied pineapple. Rather than just sitting on top of the cupcake, when eaten the next day, the flavor from the candied pineapple seeped into the whole cupcake and pulled it all together!

At first, I was horrified. But then I thought about how tasty the bacon cupcakes were that I made a while back. And then I remembered how mouth-watering the candied pineapple looked. And I remembered that I have been wanting to make a honey cake for months.

The bacon and sweets thing hasn’t appealed to me too much, but ham and honey cake sounds like something I could get behind. And anything resembling candied or dried pineapple is winner with me (I use to choose candied pineapple over chocolates as a child)

Wow! What an ingenious idea! I love how you used the ham slices as a cupcake wrapper. I’m not whole hog on the bacon cupcake wagon but I’d definitely love to have tried one of these for the novelty (and fun) of it!

You are hilarious! These are amazing and you need to publish a book of all your amazing cupcakes.Some may read it for the recipes but just in general it would be such a great entertaining coffee table book.

Thanks for linking my Bacon cupcakes! I have to say, these look ah-mazing. And I can now tell my boyfriend that baking the cupcake in meat actually works. And works really well. He suggested it for my cupcakes, and I mocked him relentlessly. I now stand corrected. Maybe we’ll just keep this our little secret so I don’t have to admit I was wrong 😛

I wish I’d found this recipe when we had leftover Thanksgiving and Christmas ham…

Just the phrase “if you’re baking in ham” gave me the giggles! Will definitely bookmark this recipe for the next time we bake a ham at home and have leftovers. I make a marinade with pineapples, ground cloves and brown sugar which I imagine would lend a great flavor to the honey cake.

Hi there. Food on Friday: Muffins and Cupcakes is open for entries. This looks like a neat one! I do hope you link it in. This is the link . Please check out some of the great links there are already. Cheers